Six – 07

A shudder wracked him as he came back to himself, gulping in a breath, shivering violently, teeth chattering as his body realized how cold he’d been, though he hadn’t physically been up in the heights, he might as well have been. Sif tugged gently free of his arms and wrapped one of their blankets around his shoulders, kneeling in front of him and cradling his face between her palms. The warmth of her hands and fingers bled into his flesh, starting to quell the chattering, the shivers.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be really used to doing that again,” he muttered, still shivering, though less so. “Bloody hell.”

“Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Just bloody cold in the heights of those storms, you know? I’d forgotten.”

“It’s been a long time since you just went seeking one,” she murmured, settling back with him again and wrapping her arms around him. He shifted the blanket slightly to draw her underneath it with him, one arm encircling her waist. “You’ve just been controlling them lately.”

That brought another shiver that had nothing to do with the depths of cold he’d just experienced. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “If I have to do that again, it’s going to be far too soon.”

“You know you’ll have to eventually.”

“Eventually. But hopefully not soon.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head back again. The shakes were easing. His teeth had stopped chattering, his body remembering that he was, in fact, warm and safe. “Too much all around the same time is going to screw up the weather patterns a hell of a lot more than they’re already screwed up. I’d like to avoid that.”

“Have you told anyone that?”

Thordin shook his head. “No. Not yet. Kind of hoping I won’t have to. I’m sure some of them probably suspect.”

“But do they know?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But not because I told them.”

“Do you think you should say something?”

It was a question that had weighed on his mind for a while, and he thought about it again as he stared at the ceiling.

“Maybe,” he said finally. “But the last time I had to do it, I was just seizing a storm someone else had called. Something was going to end up screwed up either way.”

“Do you think they’ll ask you to call a storm on your own?”

“No,” he said, and meant it. “No, I don’t think so. Not unless things are a lot more dire than they’ve ever been. I hope against hope that’s not going to happen.”